“Nothing’s up,” laughed the aide. “But we’re all gasping for our mail. We thought you’d never get here.” “Any fighting?” asked a particularly war-like officer. The aide laughed merrily and then informed us of the Intelligence Division that the busiest time we would have each day would be when we made our morning toilet. Smith, self-appointed assistant to the General Staff, almost collapsed at this news. “What’s the price of ham and eggs?” shouted a practical-minded doughboy from a porthole to a soldier on the dock. “How long will it take us to get into the fighting?” persisted one of our belligerent officers. “What’s the words for ‘How much’ in this Rooshan language?” called a serious-minded machine-gun corporal to a sergeant ashore. “‘Skulky stoy,’” replied the sergeant, and then betraying his disgust and disillusionment, added: “Aw, you won’t see no war here--only thing you’ll fight is the grub. Them skirmishes up at Nikolsk is all over. The Bolsheviki are clear to the Ekaterinburg front, and still runnin’. And the only kind of fool money they got here is postage stamps with pictures on ’em of the Rooshan Cee-zar.” “I thought the Rooshans was off that feller for life,” said the corporal. “Don’t you think that because they put the crusher on him, they don’t want him. They don’t know their elbers from breakfast without a boss. How you expect anybody who says ‘da-da-da’ for ‘yes’ to have any sense?” Who says an army is not supposed to think? Our army does--our doughboys in Siberia could have given pointers to statesmen at home. It is a good thing to bear in mind. Somebody asked where we were to be quartered, and we learned that we had better remain aboard the transport till quarters could be arranged. Of course, the officers with troops went to the nearby stations with their commands, some being sent to the Suchan Mines, some to Khabarovsk, where were the headquarters of the Twenty-seventh Infantry, and others distributed to units stationed along the railroad. But fifteen officers and fifteen field clerks of the Intelligence Division had no more homes than so many jack-rabbits. The Chief Intelligence Officer came down to the transport and interviewed us, and gave us a chance to size him up. He had been in the country several months, had seen much of the fighting of the Cossack chiefs against the Bolshevists up the line of the railroad, and had a good grasp of the situation. But under our policy of “non-interference,” there was little use for grasping anything--the chief job was to keep hands off all Siberian affairs.